Fighting fires is a hazardous activity which requires skill and experience if one is to avoid injury. In order to train fire fighters, various training systems have been developed which simulate, to some degree, a fire scenario. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 5,052,933 discloses a fire fighter trainer which has a plurality of gas burners which are controlled to simulate a scenario of fire growth and spread. This trainer has a detection system for detecting the application of fire extinguishing agents. The flame of the burners are reduced and finally shut off in proportion to the amount of detected fire extinguishing agent.
However, in real life, fires can reignite after they have been extinguished. This is due to the fact that burning objects have stored heat. The reigniting of a fire is an extremely dangerous situation since, for example, the reignited fire can block exit from a structure. Thus, in order to present a fire fighter with a more realistic fire scenario, it is necessary to simulate heat content of a simulated burning object and to possibly reignite a burner based on these parameters and determine the effect of the same on the fighter, i.e. would he be injured, killed, etc. In this manner, fire fighters can learn to apply an amount of fire suppressing which not only extinguishes the fire but also reduces the heat content of the burning object to a level where it cannot reignite. Furthermore, recording of the event would enable the fire fighter to learn a technique without experiencing an actual reflame should safety considerations dictate. The present invention describes such a fire fighter training system and method.